At the moment I'm staying in Ooyama, just near Ooyama Station, off of "Happy Fun Road" (I am not making this up), north Tokyo, close-ish to Ikebukuro. I leave on Sunday, however. Big elephant tears *sobsob*.

Don't forget, kanji were stolen wholesale from the Chinese. The readings have been totally altered, so it is spoken differently, plus Japanese is an inflective language, you know all this because you're taking Japanese. Anyways, don't forget that the origins of kanji sometimes make no sense when viewed in a Japanese context, because the <i>pictoral</i> origins are Chinese...

Also, all kanji are somewhat angular, which is why things like stones come out as square. There is one radical that's an exception, and it's a biotch to draw right, when you're using it in a sentence. Here it is, in the kanji for "to commute", or "to attend school" with the readings "kayo(u)" or "tsuu":
And again in the kanji for "week", pronounced "shuu" (this one only has one reading, as far as I know):
Even this evil little squiggle (EVIL. eeeevil. ESPECIALLY when writing "two weeks (duration)" in kanji. I ALWAYS mess it up, and growl annoyedly, and have to start over.) is made somewhat angular for printed kanji. These pictures are actually halfway between handwriting and typewritten.
The reason for this is easy discernability. Once you start learning a lot of kanji, you'll find that having to draw a lot of really tiny straight lines, hooks and squares is a lot easier than having to draw a neat circle or curve in such rushed/cramped conditions. The reason everything is squared off is purely utilitarian, so that when you get to kanji with 20 strokes, it won't look like scribbles. It's easier to link lines together when they're straight, too.

EDIT: Also, they had a problem drawing a stone as just a plain square because that kanji was taken. Voila: "kuchi","kou", "ku", or "mouth".

Yeah, I understood the part about angular design and the origins of them being from China.. (though for a moment I did have a brain fart about the second part). And that "mouth" was already assigned and used, thats why I found the depiction of a stone so unique.

The truth is I studied Japanase. Its been almost 4 years since my last class though. (2 years of High School japanese, 6-weeks in Okinawa Japan, and 1 semester of japanese at a community college) So at my height I knew probably close to 300 kanji.. Now I'd safely bet I'm back to less than 75. Thats why I find your kanji lessons so entertaining and educating. ^_^

Oh and I'll also say.. I'm oddly happy I got out before I met a 20-stroke Kanji... though thats not to say that I don't miss the language very much. I love the way it flows off the tongue. Ahh.. to be bilingual in anything.. thats a goal I need to strive harder to achieve.

Heh, you knew more than I do, then. Sorry for coming off patronising, if I did.

I just love languages in general. This one in particular, because it's even hard for its native speakers, and is thus a neverending challenge.

You're fine. And I know for a fact that I don't know more than you right now. I'm so very very rusty. >_<

But yeah, gotta love languages. I'm just happy I grew up with English and don't have to learn it as a second language.. because I'm sure its probably the hardest one out there. I actually never found alot of trouble with Japanese.. but then I came into it with three years of Latin under my belt, and ANYTHING was going to be easier than that. Latin and I are no longer friends. We had a really bad breakup.

That, my dear, is Ishida again, just written in haste. Here, I go to my trusty Japanese digital camera (her name is Hikachimaru, by the way, bad joke on my part, meaning "one whose essence brings light"), and my trusty kanji pen (he has remained nameless, unfortunately).

Step One: Writing Ishida slowly and carefully (sorry for my form; I was holding the camera in between my eyes and the paper):
Step Two: What you see in this comic (well, OK, approx.):
Which is the same thing, but quickly written (often when kanji are written quickly, stroke order goes to hell. Note that I'm not 100% sure about the correctness of my stroke order in the above photos...'cause I studied these kanji a good while ago).

Eheh, not that I'm completely sure that my theory is correct, either; the quality of the image isn't good enough to see 'em clearly. *squints*

But yeah, gotta love languages. I'm just happy I grew up with English and don't have to learn it as a second language.. because I'm sure its probably the hardest one out there.

Really? Most people say english is one of the easier languages. For example there is just one article, not too many cases and less irreglar verbs than in other languages. From my experience french and spanish are much harder. Can't tell about german because that's my native language, but from what I heard it's quite a bitch with three different articles and four cases.

Japanese on the other basically isn't hard, but just very different from the romanic/germanic languages. And of course all the kanji are hard to memorize.

I think maybe people say English is so hard because one word can have so many completely different meanings.

Michael wrote:

and the way there's so many exceptions to every rule you end up just memorising every word/sentence seperately

Precisely.

Also, I heard from a marine in Okinawa once, that he was stationed in Germany for a couple of years and found it to be the easiest language he's ever learned. Though I have a german friend.. I haven't really sat down with her and tried to learn it.. so I don't personally know if his statement is true. Just going on what I heard.

And yeah, I think thats also whats so intimidating about asian languages to westerners.. its just such a completely different phonetic structure.

Man, French is ten times easier than english. Speaking as a student taking French as a second language it makes SO MUCH more sense than english in the way sentences are formed and with verb conjugation._________________Anything new and exciting?

Romance languages are pretty easy, English has way too many exceptions to the rules. They all follow similar patterns anyways, deriving from Latin._________________I'm doing the twitter thing; you should stalk/follow me: http://twitter.com/sillygurlroo